BIRD BURGLARS

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I have talked before a a bit about bird netting. All around Matakana Valley you can see white netting over and along side the rows of grapes. Here is a article in this week's local paper that gives a good overview of the bird situation here--burglars is the right name for those feathered devils!!!!

Tomorrow is the BIG DAY here as it is the day of the first MatakanaWine Festival. The bad news is it is now raining cats and dogs outside so we will have a soggy site tomorrow. Oh, well at least it will be cooler and we should have a better demand for our red wines. It is been mostly around 80 here this week and that favors the consumptioin of whites.

More on the big day soon. DR JIM

Robin Ransom Article in Feb Matakana Matters

Bird burglars

Summer of 2008 has to date been like the summers we all fondly remember – warm and sunny, dry and golden. These are the sorts of summers holidaymakers and grape growers dream of, and the kids can go back to school with the satisfaction of having had a great holiday season.

We also had a relatively warm and dry late winter and spring. This sort of weather in the second half of the year means that the bird population can thrive. If large numbers of birds survive the cooler months there are more of them around to breed through spring and summer. We now have more thrushes and blackbirds than I can recall and the small bird population in general seems to have flourished.

Native birds are generally not a problem but small birds of European origin just love grapes. In a dry summer they love them long before they are ripe, because they are a ready source of moisture when other sources are scarce. Birds can strip a vineyard in no time at all. Thrushes and blackbirds take whole berries, but silvereyes and finches peck holes in them, which creates an ideal environment for fungal diseases to flourish. So we are having to take our annual defensive measures earlier than usual.

There is a range of defensive methods. Some involve noise – such as guns, gas bangers, noisy motorbikes tearing up and down the rows, or high pitched electronic noise which only birds detect. Others involve visual deterrents – scarecrows, kites, balloons and wind streamers. In Marlborough winegrowers are experimenting with trained native falcons.

But generally the most effective defense is to erect a physical barrier – netting. Nets are expensive to buy, time-consuming to deploy, easy to damage, and effective only if coverage is complete and seamless. If not, you can sometimes wander into the vineyard and see a net aviary full of grape-stuffed birds. But the cost and inconvenience of netting are minor costs to pay for the peace of mind of knowing that your vines are not being plundered by rapacious avian burglars.

So when you see nets being draped over the hills in the next little while, I trust you will feel more sympathy for the winegrowers than for the birds!